I think that it is a mistake to expect the vocal tards to change. I read somewhere that once a person has vocalised their position it is very hard to get them to shift. I think it is the lurkers who are the ones who get deconverted or even get stopped from falling into trap in thinking that ID is anything but bad theology

I believe that we all have said something more or less similar, i.e. that we believe that to be a rational possibility, but I have labored to draw attention to the lack of evidence supporting the hypothesis that de-tard happens as a result of these discussions.

it's almost completely faith-based. but there are only 2 examples which have been offered so far. out of years and years and years of licking the hair off the tard

Edited by Erasmus, FCD on Sep. 28 2012,22:33

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

Here's what I'm getting at: it might be that the biggest annual changes in the number of de-tards, relative to the tards, would be due to recruitment and mortality, not changing from one group to the other.

And if that is true, then I think several other things are also true.

first, there will always be tard. competing magic vs. not-magic explanations for duh universe aren't just going to go away because all of a sudden tards give a shit about something like that. it's likea two-party system, an evolutionarily stable strategy. science and faith like host and parasite.

two the tard will never change. Even though it was better back in the goodle days (le afdave por exemplor) when they spoke portugese at the tower of bible it is still the same shitty arguments parasitizing the epistemic capital of methodological naturalism

three the tard will always change. Even though it's the same old shit from way back before the goodle days (et tu, materialist) when they had the old time epicurean democritean matter matters, science has progressed.

yet the tard parasitizes that progress, to advance arguments that were not even possible for tards to consider much less, discover,quantify, formulate and falsify.

the tard changes with science, for if there were no science to deny, tard would be simple ritual and punishment

four motives are pretty much the only fucking thing worth talking about, so get over yourselfs

Edited by Erasmus, FCD on Sep. 28 2012,23:30

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

--------------"[...] the type of information we find in living systems is beyond the creative means of purely material processes [...] Who or what is such an ultimate source of information? [...] from a theistic perspective, such an information source would presumably have to be God."

It's all well and good to question the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of particular modes of de-tardification, but let's not lose sight of one very important fact:De-tardification does happen.We can argue over how frequently it occurs, whether de-tardification occurs often enough to overcome the recruitment efforts of existing tards, and a host of other questions… but given the known and cited instances, we can't argue that de-tardification does, in fact, happen. And since it does happen, it's fair to ask how does it happen? There are fat-and-happy tard who stay fat-and-happy tards, and there are fat-and-happy tards who break free of the tard; what makes the difference between them?Looking at the personal testimonies of people who have successfully broken free of the tard, there's one factor which is common to most (if not all) of these stories: The person was exposed to the truth, and they found that they couldn't stand the conflict between the truth they were exposed to and the Truth they had been brainwashed into believing. And what does internet de-tardification consist of?Exposing people to the truth.So it seems to me that in the absence of hard data, we should tentatively accept the null hypothesis—which is, in this case, that internet de-tardification does help people overcome their former tard-y state. Whether or not this is a good thing, well, I think it is, but that's one of those questions that can be argued.

It's all well and good to question the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of particular modes of de-tardification, but let's not lose sight of one very important fact:De-tardification does happen.We can argue over how frequently it occurs, whether de-tardification occurs often enough to overcome the recruitment efforts of existing tards, and a host of other questions… but given the known and cited instances, we can't argue that de-tardification does, in fact, happen. And since it does happen, it's fair to ask how does it happen? There are fat-and-happy tard who stay fat-and-happy tards, and there are fat-and-happy tards who break free of the tard; what makes the difference between them?Looking at the personal testimonies of people who have successfully broken free of the tard, there's one factor which is common to most (if not all) of these stories: The person was exposed to the truth, and they found that they couldn't stand the conflict between the truth they were exposed to and the Truth they had been brainwashed into believing. And what does internet de-tardification consist of?Exposing people to the truth.So it seems to me that in the absence of hard data, we should tentatively accept the null hypothesis—which is, in this case, that internet de-tardification does help people overcome their former tard-y state. Whether or not this is a good thing, well, I think it is, but that's one of those questions that can be argued.

Of course there is de-tarding. The question I have been hoping to answer is "Does de-tarding happen because of internetting tards".

That answer seems to be No, qualified with "it takes a village and internetting the tards might sometimes be the last straw"

I would suggest that instead of "de-tards were exposed to the truth and couldn't stand the conflict" vs "tards are not exposed" or "tards are exposed but compartmentalized the conflict", that the common factor among de-tards is that they were suspicious of the tard in the first place. there might be a more or less deterministic rate of de-tarding no matter what other factors are involved.

I think the appropriate null hypothesis is that "internetting does not cause de-tard", and we haven't seen any evidence that it does, really.

Consider the sheer volume of tard you've seen on the internet. It's pretty pathetic that only two examples of de-tard are the fruit of all that labor, and the relationship with internetting the tard for those two is at least questionable

Edited by Erasmus, FCD on Sep. 29 2012,09:44

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

i don't have any robust comparative methods for comparing the other species of tard so i just ignored the woo. but if woo overlaps with tard, and "de-tarding" is the intellectuall exercise that would encourage "de-woo" then there may be an even stronger case that internetting the tard doesn't cause de-tard but may cause trophic shifts from tard to woo LOL

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

It would be interesting to be able to check up on all the past UDidiots, the ones that have gone missing. I wonder if any of them have detarded and slunk away in embarrassment at ever having been sucked into that mess.

Yeah, I have often wondered about Lee Bowen. He was a regular on UD. He once showed on my blog and disappeared from the scene shortly thereafter.

PS: Never try to post a picture when using a cell phone to comment

I spend an inordinate amount of time responding to newspaper articles, and subsequent discussions about ID, and creationism. Lee shows up quite often and is as full of ID creationist bullshit as ever.

--------------"Science is the horse that pulls the cart of philosophy."

…in the absence of hard data, we should tentatively accept the null hypothesis—which is, in this case, that internet de-tardification does help people overcome their former tard-y state.

The question I have been hoping to answer is "Does de-tarding happen because of internetting tards".

There is a certain amount of ambiguity in the phrase "because of". If you're asking whether de-tardification ever happens solely and entirely as a result of internet de-tard activity—that is, whether or not de-tardification happens because of internet de-tard and only internet de-tard—the answer is almost certainly "of course not". But if that's what you're asking, is there anything which de-tarding can rightly be said to occur "because of"?If, on the other hand, you're asking whether internet de-tard activity is a contributing factor to de-tardification, I honestly don't see how the answer can be anything but "of course it is". To be sure, this doesn't address the question of how effective internet de-tard is, nor the question of how effective internet de-tard might be by comparison with other techniques. But since there are genuine examples of ex-tards who credit internet de-tard activity as having helped them along on their journey away from the Tard Side, the efficacy of internet de-tard activity must be greater than zero.

But since there are genuine examples of ex-tards who credit internet de-tard activity as having helped them along on their journey away from the Tard Side, the efficacy of internet de-tard activity must be greater than zero.

Do you have examples? That's what I was gunning for here.

Agreed that cause and effect here is dodgy. And the converse of this is that we know of no one here who has tardicated to the tard side since the time of the swamp.

ETA if it's not statistically significantly different from zero then pretenses to the contrary about how it "must make a difference because after all I detarded" are more or less faith-based statements.

That is a fascinating result to consider. I like it. Glen said "other people's godlessness is not my business" and I think I am sufficiently de-tarded to where I understand how that is probably the zenlike state where we can be most effective, IF there is any effect.

Edited by Erasmus, FCD on Sep. 29 2012,13:34

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

I would suggest that... the common factor among de-tards is that they were suspicious of the tard in the first place.

I don't think so. In my case, for example, I assumed that the tard was true, because my parents, my pastor, and many people I respected told me it was true.

It wasn't until I started learning science that I realized, to my discomfort and distress, that there was a conflict between science and my religion. And my initial response was not to become suspicious of the tard. I doubled down on the tard and became suspicious of the science!

--------------And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G

I would suggest that... the common factor among de-tards is that they were suspicious of the tard in the first place.

I don't think so. In my case, for example, I assumed that the tard was true, because my parents, my pastor, and many people I respected told me it was true.

It wasn't until I started learning science that I realized, to my discomfort and distress, that there was a conflict between science and my religion. And my initial response was not to become suspicious of the tard. I doubled down on the tard and became suspicious of the science!

Interesting - did you take your convictions online? (I'm not looking for links!).

Interesting - did you take your convictions online? (I'm not looking for links!).

No, I detarded long before I got my first Internet connection. It's a shame. I think the Internet would have sped up the process significantly.

Quote

BTW My vote, should anyone care, for pending de-tard is Sal Cordova.

Yeah, I can imagine that happening. He'll still be a douche, though.

My vote is for vjtorley. He's smart enough to know, at some level, how lame the pro-tard arguments are. On the other hand, he also uses his intelligence to fool himself via rationalizations. The resulting high levels of cognitive dissonance are building up in him like the stress on a thrust fault. When the fault finally gives, he'll be one of those rare birds who detard overnight.

Edited by keiths on Sep. 29 2012,18:36

--------------And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G

Interesting - did you take your convictions online? (I'm not looking for links!).

No, I detarded long before I got my first Internet connection. It's a shame. I think the Internet would have sped up the process significantly.

Quote

BTW My vote, should anyone care, for pending de-tard is Sal Cordova.

Yeah, I can imagine that happening. He'll still be a douche, though.

My vote is for vjtorley. He's smart enough to know, at some level, how lame the pro-tard arguments are. On the other hand, he also uses his intelligence to fool himself via rationalizations. The resulting high levels of cognitive dissonance are building up in him like the stress on a thrust fault. When the fault finally gives, he'll be one of those rare birds who detard overnight.

agreed that this model is more or less accurate

if the phenomenon is more prevalent than i have assumed then the question is "why don't we hear about de-tard"

presumably all of us would (and have) admitted this. but it may be that time lapse is greater. i am not sure. but i wonder if someone de-tards and can't admit it, have they really de-tarded.

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

To me it seems more or less inevitable that we'll not know what effect internet anti-tard arguments, evidence, snark, and cajoling will do. I mean, how many people will ever say, well, I did believe in IDiocy, or at least hoped it was correct, but internet snarks made me uneasy enough to start paying attention to the actual arguments and evidence presented, until I finally studied evolution--like I should have from the beginning--and finally realized that it's justified science like ecology and meteorology?

Most people simply won't start the story of how they arrived at a position by noting that they were made to feel stupid by what are often fairly juvenile tactics (by myself included, of course). Sure enough, a few would, realizing that the barren wasteland of creationism that they once accepted had to be matched by some jeers and cajoles for them to start to fear that it really was stupid, but the majority will tell a "better story" about how they sorted through things in an effort to be completely honest intellectually. We at least do know that the treatment of Sternberg as a purveyor of idiocy (legitimate, of course) apparently troubled him enough to whine like a martyr, as well as to embellish his "martyrdom." He's almost certainly too far gone to ever admit what a jerk he really is/was, for that matter.

People will often admit to being persuaded to study, rarely to being shamed into it.

And this is going to be the case wherever people's appallingly stupid ideas are ridiculed. We feel that such ridicule works--not commonly on the committed (vocally committed, especially, as stated earlier in the thread), but on those still capable of persuasion--and seem to have an evolutionary sense that it is so (also a dicey claim when we can't test it), but has ridicule plus argumentation and persuasion ever been shown to work anywhere except in rather contrived psychological experiments? "In the field" it's always going to be tough to test whether or not it is effective, but it seems that we're going to more or less accept that it does to some useful (yet quite possibly fairly small) extent because of how our brains work.

Not all things are going to be capable of being shown to work--at least in the general population. Probably tests could be contrived to see how well internet tactics work, but, practically these would almost certainly have to be among fairly select portions of the population (college students being typical), and of short duration (yes, how long did "Judgment Day" persuade college students in the study?).

We probably are stuck just using our sense of how people are persuaded with varying amounts ridicule, encouragement, argumentation, and informing them of very basic facts, like how one actually arrives at reliable information (not by speculating that a designer will design within all of the expected limits of evolution, notably). That's what we've done in the past, and it's what we're largely stuck with now, if with a little bit more objective information showing that pretty much all of the persuasive tactics work at least in limited tests.

Common sense certainly can be wrong, but it's right often enough to go with when the specifically desired supporting data don't exist--and when we know both from experience and from limited data that those are still teachable are sometimes persuaded to think by carrots, by sticks, and by combinations of those and the evidence and inference from that evidence.

I'll repeat my two points: 1) detardation is almost always a gradual process, and 2) there is rarely a single, isolated cause.

#1 means that you won't see detardation in the immediate aftermath of an Internet discussion, even if that discussion had a detardative impact. (Plus the fact that even pseudonymous commenters are loathe to admit error.)

#2 means that you'll rarely find ex-tards identifying a single reason for their detardation. In my case, I credit conversations with friends (including the Mormon I mentioned earlier), voracious reading, and just plain thinking about the issues. They all contributed.

You typically hear people say things like "I just came to realize over time that my position didn't hold up to scrutiny." What they don't say is "On September 27th at UD, Erasmus FCD defeated my last argument in favor of intelligent design and I became a Darwinist." That doesn't mean that your argument didn't have an impact.

"No it was very, very gradual. Actually there's not really one single moment where I can look back and say ah, that was the moment. It was kind of a slow progression," Teresa MacBain shared about her loss of faith with CP in a phone interview on Tuesday...

Unable to point to one specific incident that made her change her mind about God and the Bible, MacBain chronicled the train of thought that led her from the Christian faith to her secularist reasoning today.

"It's just theological. I had no problems with the church or the structure or the organization. There are basically four steps that occurred over a long period of time. One was the contradictory nature of the Bible; the lack of scientific or historical foundation or accuracy, which took me a very, very long time to come to terms with. That was the starting point I guess when I realized that that wasn't true, that the Bible wasn't true. From there I moved to thinking about all of the religions in the world and how people basically associate, in most cases, with one religion or another based upon their own culture and how they were raised," she said.

"So I kind of moved into a position where I thought that all religions were equally valid and that it kind of depended on who you were and how you were raised but that we were all on the same journey. From there I moved to the question of the existence of hell and trying to understand how a supreme being could create humans that according to the Christian Bible are very weak and finite, as compared to God. How that creature, being, entity, whatever you want to call it, could punish them eternally in such a horrible and torturous place as hell. So that was kind of a third discovery."

--------------And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G

I tried to set up these points so that "de-tarding" didn't mean "denying all gods" or some synonym for atheism, but instead was explicitly denying that there is any factual, philosophical or theoretical basis for creationism.

I have not been very clear with this and it's hard to draw a bright line there anyway. But my comments have been more or less directed at this concept of de-tard and not the idea of losing religious beliefs in general

Edited by Erasmus, FCD on Sep. 30 2012,13:39

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

A collection of links to de-tarding testimonies which, while prolly not involving internet de-tard activity in specific, appear to support the hypothesis that exposure to the truth is a significant contributing factor to successful de-tarding:http://www.talkorigins.org/origins....02.html

It was fallacious of me to take such liberties in the way I assumed Genesis to merely be symbolic. I've learnedthat the questions surrounding it are much more complex than that, and require much deeper study. While I still accept evolution as a valid scientific theory and valid subject of study, I regret to think I may have steered others fromproperly respecting the very Bible I base my belief system upon. There is symbolism in Genesis, but I no longerhold many of the same opinions I once did about it as noted in the POTM. I believe there was an Adam now, for example, though I believe he was both a literal person and a symbol of mankind. Other such opinions have also, shall I say, 'evolved'. Please understand that I will continue to pursue the proper way to synthesize good faith and goodscience and have and likely will make misjudgements along the way.

however the t.o. essay seems to place Rubystars directly in the camp of "de-tarded because of internetting the tards" although in her[?] case she was the tard who was slaying all those evilutionists.

her comments about athiests in forums and not agreeing that her religious beliefs are irrational make me think that this de-tard thing wasn't permanent. either way, a very interesting set of links. Gracias!

Edited by Erasmus, FCD on Sep. 30 2012,20:19

--------------You're obviously illiterate as hell. Peach, bro.-FtK

Finding something hard to believe based on the evidence, is science.-JoeG

In my experience in debating in Italian forums, all the detard events I witnessed were by lurkers or people who posted very few times and I was aware of them only because they PM me, thanking me and asking me to go on.

I think it has to do with how strongly you were tarded, the more fundamentalist the more likely it is that when you de-tard you won't admit it to anyone (and sometimes not even themselves). I'm willing to bet that there are many tards out there that know perfectly well how things went, but are surrounded so they keep up the lie or just ignore the issue. So you won't get any feedback from these guys.

Further I bet many tards think that admitting to the de-tard event is equivalent to refuting their entire faith (which is a lot bigger than just accepting evolution). I think it's important to note that should science be wrong about evolution it would mean new science, new theories, new discoveries and generally happy scientists. Should science be right (and we know it is) it means the collapse of a faith, culture and way of life for many fundamentalists.

--------------"Cows who know a moose when they see one will do infinitely better than a cow that pairs with a moose because they cannot see the difference either." Gary Gaulin

Consider the alternative, that no one on the internet opposed the Discovery Institute. Or no blogs responding to creationist claims. No parodies of the creation museum.

Yes I like that.

I offer the possibility that were this the case, nothing would be different in terms of

1. sheer number of tards2. rates of de-tard

Of course we would have to test these hypotheses and I am eager for the opportunity.

We also need to consider the rate of tard production (tardogenesis?)

Nothing we do will shift the hardcore tards. They didn't get where they are via reason and evidence, and they're not going anywhere else that way. They're all either pure culture-warriors who neither know nor care about science (Denyse) or are deluded about their scientific abilities to the point of mental illness (batshit77). Either way, they're hopeless cases.

But I like to think we can have some effect on the newbies: people who've heard about IDC online or at church and like the sound of this new science which proves Jesus. We won't stop them all, but we're probably stopping some.

--------------Math is just a language of reality. Its a waste of time to know it. - Robert Byers

Consider the alternative, that no one on the internet opposed the Discovery Institute. Or no blogs responding to creationist claims. No parodies of the creation museum.

Yes I like that.

I offer the possibility that were this the case, nothing would be different in terms of

1. sheer number of tards2. rates of de-tard

Of course we would have to test these hypotheses and I am eager for the opportunity.

We also need to consider the rate of tard production (tardogenesis?)

Nothing we do will shift the hardcore tards. They didn't get where they are via reason and evidence, and they're not going anywhere else that way. They're all either pure culture-warriors who neither know nor care about science (Denyse) or are deluded about their scientific abilities to the point of mental illness (batshit77). Either way, they're hopeless cases.

But I like to think we can have some effect on the newbies: people who've heard about IDC online or at church and like the sound of this new science which proves Jesus. We won't stop them all, but we're probably stopping some.

Do you think the n00b tardz are going to wade through 900 fucking comments at UD and several hundred at TSZ in order to try to make a judgment call on whether gpuccio is an obstinately deluded fool?